


Rarely Make History

by swingandswirl



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Characters of Colour, Desi Characters, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:32:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingandswirl/pseuds/swingandswirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well-behaved women rarely make history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rarely Make History

 

**Greed**

 

Amita looks longingly at the dress on her screen. It’s gorgeous, flared skirt and fitted one-shoulder bodice, a lovely rust colour that she knows will flatter her immensely. One tab over, there’s a lovely pair of Kate Spade pumps, black patent leather and three-inch heels, that she’s had her eye on for a while now. And Sephora’s just sent her another coupon code, there’s a new eyeshow palette MAC’s put out that she’s been dying to try.

Except that the new Primacy upgrade will be out next month and she’d really like to upgrade her rig before that, not to mention that there’s always more stuff she tempted to buy for Kali, and for herself. Not to mention she wants to do the Disney half marathon in Orlando next year, and she’s already running behind on saving for the trip.

Amita closes the window before she can give her poor credit cards any more heart attacks. Tempting as all of it is, TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack will have to do for now.

She sighs. As much as she loves her job, days like this, she wishes she had listened to Chandra athai and become an investment banker.

 

 

***

 

**Lust**

 

Good Indian girls are supposed to behave. They’re supposed to marry nice boys and do their wifely duty. They’re not supposed to think about things like dating and sex- those things will happen in their time, in marriages arranged by The Aunties. Love- let alone lust, let alone this raw animal need- doesn’t factor into the equation, except as something to be ashamed of and buried.

Good Indian girls, Amita thinks, can go fuck themselves.

She likes boys and she’s not afraid to admit it. And while her family might hold on to the delusion that they can raise her like they would have in India, curfews and restrictions and rules, they forget that she’s American in spirit as well as by birth.

She plays along with their rules until she goes to MIT, then throws herself into getting a very thorough education, both in math and science as well as in other things, lets her family think she’s going to settle down with Kapil when really he’s just a nice smokescreen to date Marco and Jimmy and Brett.

It’s not always the smoothest path- she gets her heart broken more than once- but it’s one she’s happy to take.

 

 

***

 

**Gluttony**

 

Amita loves India. Visiting relatives is always fun- she gets to climb trees and listen to stories and get throroughly spoiled- but more importantly, there’s the food.

Butter-soft idlis and paper-thin dosais, served with piping hot sambar and ice-cold rasam that Radha Chitti will make fresh every morning, the sounds of Vishnu Sahasarnam echoing through the house from the neighbours’ old stereo.

Ghee-soaked aloo paranthe and spicy chole bhature from Dadima’s kitchen. Gulab jamun that melts in her mouth, sweet chill mango kulfi and badam milk to beat the desert heat. The bright red of the chillis drying on the roof, the smell of masala wafting through the house as Dadima presides over the monthly grinding.

And then there’s the street food, when she goes to Bombay and Rani Didi convinces her father to let her take her favourite cousin out for the day. Shopping in Linking Road always means pani puri and jaljeera and bhel puri and vada pav, flavours exploding on her tongue in a way they never do in America.

Amita’s mother always frets about the weight she puts on whenever she goes to India, but to Amita, every calorie is worth it.

 

 

***

 

**Wrath**

 

Vishal continues to speak, but Amita’s no longer listening, numb disbelief warring with anger.

She’d thought he was different, better than the rest, that ten years in America might be enough. She’d been wrong.

Amita, baby, you don’t understand, he’d said. I can’t have my wife going around with vellaikara policemen, what will people say? And anyway it’s not like you’re going to have time even for a career after the kids come, forget running around playing Nancy Drew.

Amita can feel her blood start to boil from the casual, callous sexism of it. Never mind she’s a genius in her own right, never mind that she’s been doing groundbreaking work here at Harvard. Never mind all the people she’s helped. All she’s ever going to be to Vishal Swaminathan is a wife and broodmare, a pretty little chess piece trophy wife.

It’s almost funny, the disbelief on his face when she tells him that those vellaikaras are better men than he’ll ever be, throwing both his ring and his words back in his face before she walks out.

At least I found out before the wedding, she thinks as she packs her bags for LA, but it’s cold comfort.

 

 

***

 

**Envy**

 

“It’s not fair! I hate it! I hate all of them! Why can’t I just be normal?” Amita sobs.

Kapil, who’s been patting her back and just letting her cry it out for the past hour, says, “What’s wrong this time?”

Amita throws herself back onto the bed. “Just... Carly and Jenna were getting at me again. Stupid blonde bimbo cows, the both of them. Like I asked for any of this. Like I asked to be different or smart. I just want to be normal.”

Kapil doesn’t say anything for a moment, then he looks over at her. “Do you know what normal actually means, Ami?”

Amita pokes him. “Please. You’re Mr. Reads The Dictionary. You tell me what normal means.”

Kapil chuckles and affects his best snotty British voice. “Normal: standard, average, conforming to the norm.” He continues in a more normal tone. “Why would you even want to be any of those things? Normal is boring.”

“Look, ten years from now, Carly and Jenna are going to be working minimum wage at Wal-mart after their husbands trade them in for younger models. But you, my dear, are going to take over the world. So fuck normal.”

 

 

***

 

**Sloth**

 

Amita stretches langurously, luxuriating in the fact that she has nowhere to be and nothing to do today.

Taking a year off to backpack in South East Asia between undergraduate and graduate school has been the best decision she’d ever made. Her family had flipped, of course, but since Amita’s earned the money she’d need for her trip herself they hadn’t been able to do more than rant and rave until Kapil drove her to the airport.

It’s six months since then, and Amita’s lying on a beach in Thailand, reading a book and people-watching behind her sunglasses. Despite all her family’s concerns, this break is something she’s needed after the craziness of graduating from MIT at nineteen with a double major in math and computer science. With the amount of pressure she’d put on herself to succeed, she’s been lucky to escape with only a minor mental breakdown as it is, not that her family knows about any of it. And now that she has her valedictorian’s sash, damned if she isn’t going to enjoy herself.

Amita smiles to herself as a particularly gorgeous redhead comes strolling down the beach. Maybe one day she’ll do more than watch.

 

 

***

 

**Pride**

 

No matter how busy she is otherwise, Amita always makes sure to carve out enough time in her schedule every June to attend the local Pride parade.

She’s not any flavour of LGBTQ- she likes boys and always has- but she’s got enough friends who are that this is her fight, too. And she knows what it’s like, to be the one who’s different, strange, other.

She does her bit through the year, donations to PFLAG and oSTEM, a rainbow sticker on her door for anyone who needs it, a zero-tolerance policy both in her classroom and her guilds. But Pride’s important, too. And not just because she gets to go out and have an excuse to dance in the street, a way to publically show her support for Kapil and Gracie and Maria and Bobby and Prateik and everyone else.

All of Amita’s grandparents fought for Independence, for freedom and self-determination and basic human dignity, and even now she’s got cousins back in India fighting for change. She knows she can’t come close to touch their strength, their sacrifices, but she hopes that in her own small way she’s making the world a better place for everybody.

 

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> So. Anyone who knows me knows I detest Amita.
> 
> Or, to be more precise, I detest the way that Amita is portrayed on the show. They’ve taken the bones of a fine character and turned her into a sad little milkshop parody of what she could have been. If I get started ranting on all the ways they get her wrong, both as a woman and an ethnic character, we’d be here all day, so suffice it to say: Bad N3, no gulab jamun for you.
> 
> So rather than that I present to you my version of Amita. I’ve taken the bones of the S1 version of her character and reimangined her as something more than Charlie’s glorifeied WASP math girlfriend, as a woman with a life and passions and dreams of her own, and I hope I’ve done her justice. 
> 
> Glossary time:
> 
> Chitti: Tamil, mother’s younger sister  
> Dadima: Hindi, father’s mother  
> Vellaikara: a dismissive way of referring to white folk, something like ‘cracker’  
> Didi: Elder sister  
> Vishnu Sahasarnamam: A chant of all the names of the god Vishnu, almost always played during morning prayers in Hindu households  
>  
> 
> Now, on to the drabbles themselves:
> 
> Greed: I really like the idea of Amita being a girly girl. Her questionable taste in clothes in canon aside, I hate the dichotomy that women face, that you can be smart OR pretty. Well, fuck that noise. And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t wish they hadn’t “sold out” at some point, even if it’s only a nice pipe dream. That dress is gorgeous, though.
> 
> Lust: I have to admit, I struggled for a bit with this, and then I realised, d’oh. Amita would have been subjected to a lot of slut-shaming and assorted nonsense growing up. Indian culture is still very sex-negative and retrograde, and I wanted to talk about that a little. I also wanted to talk about this bizarre thing a lot of Indian parents abroad have, of wanting their children to grow up as sheltered as they would be in India. Uh, no, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t raise your kids in a foreign country and then turn around and expect them to be 100% Indian. /rant.
> 
> Gluttony: Okay, so this is totally going to get me flamed, but a lot of times I kind of feel sorry for anyone who does not live in India/have access to Indian food. Screw Cordon Bleu, baby, /this/ is where it’s at. I really do think you should go ahead and Google the stuff I’ve mentioned, the pictures are prettier than any descriptions I might manage. Suffice it to say that they are all very delicious. :D
> 
> And also. Just for the record. There is no fucking way Amita does not know how to cook Indian food, especially with her grandmother having lived with her as a child. No. Not. Happening. 
> 
> Wrath: I could write an entire thesis (multiple ones) on the double standards faced by Indian women. One of the most odious is that there are certain behaviours that are acceptable in a girlfriend (wearing short skirts, going to clubs) but not in a wife. And, of course, the riduculousness of the wife being expected to give up her career when (never if)the kids arrive. Oh, and another thesis on class divisions. Sadly, police are looked down by a lot of ‘educated’ people because it’s not a job with very high pay or prestige. 
> 
> Also, this fic is set in a verse where Amita did take the Harvard job, so that’s where that comes from. There may or may not be Colby/Amita sequels after she goes back to LA. :D
> 
> Envy: Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the Earth? I’m probably going to revisit this in another story, because there are huge issues with skin colour in India, and seeing how that will play in Amita’s identity and life will be interesting. (And I’m not kidding about the skin colour thing. There are actualfax ads running on NATIONAL TELEVISION saying ‘Dark out. White in.’ or similar arrant nonsense, and I had a classmate in my Ivy League-esque uni tell me to my face that dark-skinned people aren’t as good-looking as lighter-skinned ones. /headdesk/)
> 
> Sloth: Not really much to say for this one, except that I hope Amita did do more than watch. 
> 
> Pride: Possibly my favourite of the lot. I’m queer myself, and while I understand that there can be issues with allies and allyship... well, I’d rather someone be with us in whatever small measure than against us. 
> 
> Independence refers to the struggle for Indian independence, which culminated in 1947 with the creation of India and Pakistan. (Of course, then Partition happened, thanks in no small part to our not so beloved former masters, but that’s another story.) I would encourage you to read about it, the whole non-violence/Gandhian movement really shaped India as a country. Cool bonus fact: The success of the non-violence movement in India inspired MLK and contributed to the civil rights marches of the 1960s!
> 
> .... and that’s it, really. I’m going to shut up now before my A/N is longer than my drabble series.


End file.
